“I alone am guilty,” cried he, proudly.  “I alone deserve punishment.  These have done only what I commanded them—­they have but followed my orders, nothing more.  The guilt and the punishment are mine alone.”

The principal, glad to know the guilty one, kept his promise, and, forgiving the rest, decided to punish only the one who acknowledged himself to have been the leader.

Napoleon was, therefore, sentenced to the severest and most degrading punishment known in the institution—­to the so-called “monk’s penalty.”  That is to say, the future young soldier, in the coarse woollen garment of a mendicant friar, was on his knees, to devour his meal from an earthen vessel in the middle of the dining-room, while all the other boys were seated at the table.

A deathly pallor overspread the face of the boy when he heard this sentence.  He had been for many days imprisoned in a cell with bread and water, and he had without a murmur submitted to this correction, endured already on a former occasion, but this degrading punishment broke his courage.

Stunned, as it were, and barely conscious, he allowed the costume of the punishment to be put on, but when he had been led into the dining-room, where all the scholars were gathered for the noonday meal, when he was forced upon his knees, he sank down to the ground with a heavy sigh, and was seized with violent convulsions.

The rector himself, moved with deepest sympathy for the wounded spirit of the boy, hastened to raise up Napoleon.  At the same moment rushed into the hall one of the teachers of the institution, M. Patrault, who had just been informed of the execution which was about to be carried out on Napoleon.  With tears in his eyes, he hastened to Napoleon, and with trembling hands tore from his shoulders the detestable garment, and broke out at the same time in loud complaints that his best scholar, his first mathematician, was to be dishonored and treated in an unworthy manner.

Napoleon, however, was not always the reserved, grave boy who took no part in the recreations and pleasures of the rest of his young schoolmates.  Whenever these amusements were of a more serious, of a higher nature, Napoleon gladly and willingly took a part in them.  Now and then in the institution, on festivals, theatrical representations took place, and on these occasions the citizens of Brienne were allowed to be present.

But to maintain respectable order, every one who desired to be present at the representation had to procure a card of admission signed by the principal.  On the day of the exhibition, at the different doors of the institution, were posted guards who received the admission cards, and whose strict orders were to let no one pass in without them.  These posts, which were filled by the scholars, were under the supervision of superior and inferior officers, and were confided only to the most distinguished and most praiseworthy students.